02/04 2013 Posted In Family, Love & Compassion, Meditation, Mindful, Presence/Showing up, Self-care, Thoughts From Annie

Finding Comfort in Our Own Presence

Dear Friends,

The other evening I had an argument with my husband.  The argument itself wasn’t profound, but the topic raised some sadness in me about my life and forced me to confront change.  At that moment I felt sad about moving on from my role as caregiver to my four, now grown, children.  And I began to cry.

The history of crying in my life is a bit uneven.  As a young child I am pretty sure I cried the typical amount.  Because crying was about as popular as the plague in our household, I created a technique for myself that would prevent me from shedding a single tear in front of my family members.  I would repeat a mantra over and over in my head to keep me from crying.  I can only imagine what my face looked like in those moments — I’m guessing it wasn’t very pretty.  But it was damned effective.  The only time I cried was alone in my room, and mostly under the covers with a pillow over my head.

I wanted confort, but didn’t know where to find it.  When we were given an adorable cockapoo dog, Jocko, he became my crying buddy. Whenever possible, I would cry to Jocko, telling him about all my woes.  He seemed to listen with great care and tenderness.  The perfect comforter!  He would gaze at me with compassionate eyes, listen to every word, and never try to talk me out of my sadness.

As a young adult, I often shared a bedroom with others, so I developed the habit of hiding in the bathroom to cry.  Bathrooms are not the comfiest of rooms, but they were safe and I could run water to cover sobs when needed. At times I had a cat, but most of time he would flee at the first sign of tears.

As soon as I could, I brought dogs back into my life and continued to cry either to the dog, or if s/he wasn’t available, then alone in the bathroom. Being comforted by a dog isn’t exactly the same as being understood by a human, but it was the next best thing.

Last August, our oldest dog passed away.  For a few months we had our daughter’s small Havanese with us (who sadly wasn’t much more of a comfort than a cat), but of late we have been dogless.  So when I needed to cry the other night, I wasn’t sure where to go.  The bathroom I would normally use was too close to where my husband was sleeping. I started crying in my office, but that just didn’t feel right.  Then I remembered that my meditation cushion was quite comfortable and, though the room was cold, there was a space heater nearby.   So I wrapped up in a blanket, went into my meditation space, lit the candles on my altar, and lay down on my meditation cushion to cry.

As I lay there, I was reminded of the many times that I had sat on that cushion. I sat on that cushion when I was concentrated and I sat there when my mind wandered non-stop (which was much more common.)  I sat on that cushion when I was exhausted and dozing off, and I sat on that cushion when I was raging angry with myself or someone else.  And every time I sat I tried my best to stay present for the benefit of myself and all beings.  It wasn’t that I had been mindful all those sitting times — far from it — but I had been trying to be mindful and awake and compassionate.  It was my intention that I remembered and felt at that moment.

Curled up on the cushion crying, I began to feel held by that energy of intention which felt very much like the compassionate care of a dog or another being.  But because it was coming from me, that energy also had the ability to truly understand the sadness that I was feeling.  For one of the first times in my life I truly felt comforted and held in my tears.

To love, in the context of Buddhism, is above all to be there. But being there is not an easy thing. Some training is necessary, some practice. If you are not there, how can you love?  – Thich Nhat Hanh

As a result of this experience, I realized that we all have the ability to comfort ourselves.   When we sit still and really look into our deepest intentions for caring, we can see that we have the desire to care for ourselves and all beings.   Our deepest intentions might not always be obvious, but they are there.  We might have the intention to bring health to our lives, or to work in a vocation that helps others, to teach, or to be an example of mindful living through our own practice.   Marshall Rosenberg calls these intentions “universal needs.”  We all have them.     In Buddhism, this part of ourselves is called our Buddha Nature.  It’s the part that is already awake.  In other traditions it has other names.  Getting familiar with this part of ourselves can be a benefit to ourselves and those around us.  Because when we know this part, we know that even when those around us aren’t able to give us the comfort we need, we can always find it right here within ourselves.

with love, annie
09/05 2012 Posted In Busyness of Life, Environment, Mindful, Self-care, Simple Living, Thoughts From Annie

Collapsing under the Weight of it All

Dear Friends,

I think you would have laughed if you saw me this evening, lying on the family room floor with a tree trunk across my body.   Ok, it was actually a coffee table made out of a tree trunk.  But this wasn’t a help-I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up accident.   I consciously laid down and lowered the tree trunk table onto my own trunk.  And I found it oddly comforting.

If you are still reading, then you are curious enough to wonder why I was doing this, and I will explain.  Lately, I have been feeling ungrounded.  The time I spend looking at screens and typing quick responses is ever increasing, and no matter how many calls and emails I return, there are always even more in my inbox.  I am guessing you may have felt this way at times.

I travel by plane several times a month, my work day moves about between home, office, and other meeting places, and I rarely spend more than an hour or two at a time in one location.  There is very little routine to my daily life, and minimal hands-on activities like cooking, gardening, or creating art.  When I go at this pace for too long, I start to feel adrift.

In yoga class, we often put a 5 pound sandbag on our bellies to help ground us during savasana relaxation.  This helps us settle more fully into our bodies, the earth, and the present moment.  In this case I needed a 50+ pound tree trunk to help ground me and pin me to the earth!   Yes, it was difficult to breathe with the table resting on my chest and belly, but it allowed me to really let go.  That much weight could counter balance the enormous pull of email, text, phone, and never ending stream of work.   Although I knew that I could get up if I wanted to, my body felt like it was secured to the earth in a way that I couldn’t easily resist.  Ahh.

You may not need as much grounding as I did today.  But simple grounding techniques can help us balance ourselves when we get swept away by the rapid pace of our lives.  Thich Nhat Hanh recommends walking meditation as an effective way to come back to our bodies and feel the full weight of ourselves walking on earth.

The earth is sacred and we touch her with each step. We should be very respectful, because we are walking on our mother. If we walk like that, then every step will be grounding, every step will be nourishing.  - Thich Nhat Hanh

A sandbag or even a pillow on our bellies or feet can be grounding and relaxing before bedtime.  Lying down outside under a tree, gardening, or curling up with an animal (preferably a tame one) are also good ways to ground and reconnect.   Doing work with our hands and slowing down the pace of our walking and driving can help,  as can simply closing our computer, turning off our phones, and sitting still.

And for the really hectic days, you can always grab the nearest piece of furniture.

 

 

with love, annie
08/19 2012 Posted In Family, Friends & Community, Self-care, Simple Living

Love the One You’re with.

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Dear Friends,

I wrote last month about the loss of my dog, Gus after 12 1/2 years of shared life and home. The weekend after Gus died we spent in the mountains with my extended family. This included all four of us siblings, our dad, and an assortment of our children.

When we arrived back at home on Sunday night, our house was eerily empty. Our four kids were back in their respective cities, my family had gone home, and our two cats had gone out for the night. Even with my husband Paul there, it felt lonely.

The loneliness increased the next day when Paul left for a two day work trip. When I climbed the stairs to bed that night, I realized that there were no other living beings in the house. (Not entirely true, of course, given all of the insects and spiders living in nooks and crannies.) After 25 years of family living, and another 25 before that living either with humans or pets, I felt awkward and alone.

Even though I consider myself quite an introvert, there is something about living alone that feels strange to me. The weekend that we spent with my extended family had been surprisingly easy and relaxed. We siblings haven’t always had the easiest relationships, but with the large contingent of three generations, from 3 to 82 years old, there was very little room for bickering and grudges, and plenty of time for cooking together, hiking, and we even managed to play a game with all fourteen of us.

We humans evolved to live together because it makes life easier and more fun. Until World War II, US families more often than not lived in extended groups, and even now, in most countries of the world, and even in many communities in this country, the “nuclear” family is the exception. People are born, raised, partnered, and grow old in extended families. And yes, they probably have problems living in community that we don’t have to deal with living more separately. But perhaps they don’t have the same sense of loneliness. They certainly don’t seem to have the same levels of anxiety and depression that we are experiencing in western societies.

In Buddhism,there is an emphasis on sangha, or community of practitioners. Living in community allows us to share responsibilities and share commodities, which reduces our need to consume. Raising children in extended families offers parents opportunities to get support for needed time away from the kids, and also provides children with additional role models and adult connections. Shopping in bulk makes more sense when we live in community.

Living in community is where we learn to expand our compassion for others, and to let go of clinging to our imagined separate self. These are important parts of attaining freedom from our self-created suffering.

But, how do we shift back toward more community after decades of individualized living? For someone like myself, and maybe many of you, I moved hundreds of miles away from my family of origin, and my children consider our new city to be their home. We uprooted ourselves decades ago, and it would be challenging to try to transplant our new family back in the old soil.

In Tolstoy’s The Three Quesitons, The king asks, What is the most right time to begin anything? Who are the most important people to listen to? And What is the most important thing to do? Through this parable, he discovers that now is the right time to begin, the people we are with are the most important people to listen to, and the most important work is to do good for the people we are with.

Thich Nhat Hanh says something similar in The Miracle of Mindfulness:

We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service for others who are far away, helping to bring peace to the world– but often we forget that it is the very people around us that we must live for first of all. If you cannot serve your wife or husband or child or parent– how are you going to serve society? If you cannot make your own child happy, how do you expect to be able to make anyone else happy?

So I am asking myself, if we don’t have extended family nearby, how do we create it with the people right here in our lives– with our adoptive communities: the yoga and mindfulness community, the neighborhood community, and local friends? Could we fill our empty rooms with people who could become our non-family family? Should we consider moving into an intentional community? There are many different options for creating the extended family that we all need to survive and thrive. Like the Stephen Stills song says, we should “Love the one you’re with.”

I had this conversation with my oldest daughter, who just graduated from college, and she pointed out that there is a trend, given the low employment rate, for young adult children to move back in with their families after college. And I know several people retiring to intentional communities around the country. So perhaps the tide is turning and we are beginning to recognize and respect the need we have as human being to live in extended families and communities. I know that I feel the strong pull for living in community to support me as I move into a new phase of my life.

I welcome your thoughts on living in community and extended family.

With love,
Annie

 

with love, annie
04/03 2012 Posted In Busyness of Life, Mindful, Self-care, Simple Living

Dropping Plates and Doing Nothing

When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you.  Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love
          -David Whyte, from the poem Sweet Darkness

Dear Friends,
I started this month on a high note, writing a lot on my blog, traveling, going out, getting lots of work done, and balancing the many, many plates that we all juggle.  At the end of the first week of March, I was on top of my game when one of the plates dropped.  A difficulty that I thought had been resolved came back again as an open issue needing my attention.  And I faltered.  If you have ever watched a plate juggler in real life or on TV (or perhaps tried it yourself!), you know that when one plate falls, pretty soon all the plates are down, and you have quite a mess.   Since I was spinning plates at maximum capacity, lots of plates crashed to the floor, and me along with it. 

I’m guessing that many of you are like me, living and working somewhere between mania and impossible, and that it doesn’t take much to bring the whole structure to collapse.  A week before I dropped my plates, a co-worker asked me if she could talk to me about something.  I rattled off the next 8 hours of activities that I had scheduled, including a 2:45-3:00 call with my daughter.  She expressed surprise at the fact that I had to squeeze my daughter into a 15-minute time slot in the middle of so many other things.  If I were a ER doctor or a surgeon, or even someone with set hours controlled by the company, then I could better justify such a schedule.  But, heck. I am a yoga and meditation teacher who has full control over her own schedule. There’s some irony here, don’t you think?

For me, and maybe for you, some of what is on my schedule is there because I have to do it, but a lot of what’s there are things I want to do.  I want to have tea with another yoga studio owner, I want to plan a weekend away with my husband, and I want to meet with studio staff and students.  Spending time is a bit like spending money. It’s so easy and fun to spend it that before we know it, we are broke!  When I got my first job, I remember a boss telling me that I needed to always pay myself first.  I never did learn that lesson.

After my plates fell this month, I spent a few days desperately trying to get them back up, working the weekend straight through trying to get caught up on email and work.  I soon realized that I wasn’t getting back on top, just slipping further down.  And feeling pretty bad about myself as a result.  So I decided that what I needed was C&C time.  Most people think they need R&R, Rest and Relaxation, but what I really needed was C&C, Cloister and Convalesce.So I have been Cloistered — seeing other people as little as possible, even with people who are so kind as to want to help me talk through things or even take on some of the work.  I tell them about my C&C, and tell them that I will be in touch when I’m back out in the world.  And I have Convalesced — treating myself as if I had just been ill — sleeping and resting, eating as well as I can, and trying to get gentle exercise.During my C&C, I was able to restore my energy, re-prioritize my life, and recharge my enthusiasm for living.  Limiting our connection with others may sound counterproductive, but we interact with dozens or even hundreds of people each day, and more if you count the internet, Facebook, Linkedin and the like.  I am convinced that most of us aren’t wired for so much contact and so many different activities, and it simply overwhelms our nervous systems.

Now, at the end of the month and after about 10 days of C&C, I have many of my plates back up in the air, but with more awareness about each plate and why I am spinning it.  Practicing C&C is a way to pay ourselves first rather than burning up all of our valuable time on outside activities.  It also allows us to weed out any unnecessary plates that we are spinning out of habit.  If we set aside a little C&C time every day or week, we may not be able to spin quite as many plates, but we also won’t risk making such a big mess of them and suffering as a result.

As Thich Nhat Hanh says:

Doing nothing brings about quality of being, which is very important. So doing nothing is actually something. Please write that down and display it in your home: Doing nothing is something.

Let’s give it a try.

with love, annie
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